Illegal border crossing is associated with a certain level of border crime and violence and, in the most unfortunate cases, with deaths of illegal border crossers and border-area law enforcement officers. Unauthorized migration may be associated with crime and mortality in at least three distinct ways. First, unauthorized migration is associated with crime—apart from the crime of
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reported that they would not return to the United States compared to 6% in 2005. See Jeffrey Passel, D'Vera Cohn, and Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero—And Perhaps Less, Pew Hispanic Center,
Washington, DC, 2012, http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/2012/04/PHC-04-23a-Mexican-Migration.pdf, pp. 24-25.
138 See for example, Scott Borger, Gordon Hanson, and Bryan Roberts “The Decision to Emigrate From Mexico,”
presentation at the Society of Government Economists annual conference, November 6, 2012; Manuela Angelucci,
“U.S. Border Enforcement and the Net Flow of Mexican Illegal Migration,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 60, 2 (2012):311-357; Rebecca Lessem. “Mexico-US Immigration: Effects of Wages and Border Enforcement,” Carnegie Mellon University, Research Showcase, May 2, 2012.
139 See for example, Wayne Cornelius, “Evaluating Recent US Immigration Control Policy: What Mexican Migrants Can Tell Us,” in Crossing and Controlling Borders: Immigration Policies and Their Impact on Migrants’ Journeys, ed.
Mechthild Baumann, Astrid Lorenz, and Kerstin Rosenhow (Farmington, MI: Budrich Unipress Ltd, 2011); Douglas S.
Massey, Jorge Durand, and Nolan J. Malone, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration (Russell Sage Foundation, 2002).
140 See Manuela Angelucci, “U.S. Border Enforcement and the Net Flow of Mexican Illegal Migration,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, 60, 2 (2012):311-357.
illegal entry—because some unauthorized migrants contract with immigrant smugglers and because unauthorized migrants may engage in related illegal activity, such as document fraud. Yet fear of the police may make unauthorized aliens less likely to engage in other types of criminal activity, and research on the subject finds low immigrant criminality rates, especially when accounting for education levels and other demographic characteristics.141 Second, unauthorized migrants may also be likely to be targeted and become crime victims, including victims of violent crime, because they may carry large amounts of cash and may be reluctant to interact with law enforcement officials.142 Third, illegal border crossers face risks associated with crossing the border at dangerous locations, where they may die from exposure or from drowning.143
Border enforcement therefore may affect crime and migrant mortality in complex ways.144 On one hand, the concentration of enforcement resources around the border may exacerbate adverse outcomes by making migrants more likely to rely on smugglers, as noted above (see “Smuggling Fees”). The 1994 National Strategic Plan predicted a short-term rise in border violence for these reasons.145 On the other hand, to the extent that enforcement successfully deters illegal crossers, such prevention should reduce crime and mortality. The concentration of law enforcement personnel near the border may further enhance public safety and migrant protection, especially where CBP has made a priority of protecting vulnerable populations.146
The empirical record suggests that there is no significant difference in the average violent crime rate in border and non-border metropolitan areas.147 Indeed, the border cities El Paso, TX and San Diego, CA are regularly listed among the safest large cities in the country based on their rankings among similarly sized cities in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report.148 The specific impact of border enforcement on border-area crime is unknown, however, because available data cannot separate the influence of border enforcement from other factors.149
141 See CRS Report R42057, Interior Immigration Enforcement: Programs Targeting Criminal Aliens, by Marc R.
Rosenblum and William A. Kandel.
142 See Debra A. Hoffmaster, Gerard Murphy, and Shannon McFadden et al., Police and Immigration: How Chiefs are Leading Their Communities through the Challenges, Police Executive Research Forum, Washington, DC, 2010, http://www.policeforum.org/library/immigration/PERFImmigrationReportMarch2011.pdf.
143 In 2011, for example, of the 238 migrants deaths for which DHS was able to determine a cause of death, 139 were attributed to exposure to heat or cold or water-related; data provided to CRS by CBP Office of Congressional Affairs December 15, 2011.
144 Also see Karl Eschbach, Jacqueline Hagan, and Nestor Rodriguez et al., “Death at the Border,” International Migration Review, vol. 33, no. 2 (Summer 1999), pp. 430-454.
145 National Strategic Plan, p. 11-12.
146 The USBP’s Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue Unit (BORSTAR) is comprised of agents with specialized skills and training for tactical medical search and rescue operations. BORSTAR agents provide rapid response to search and rescue and medical operations, including rescuing migrants in distress. According to CBP Office of Congressional Affairs (December 9, 2011), BORSTAR agents rescued 1,070 migrants in FY2011.
147 For a fuller discussion, see CRS Report R41075, Southwest Border Violence: Issues in Identifying and Measuring Spillover Violence, by Kristin Finklea.
148 See for example, Daniel Borunda, “El Paso Ranked Safest Large city in U.S. for 3rd Straight Year,” El Paso Times, February 6, 2013, http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_22523903/el-paso-ranked-safest-large-city-u-s.
149 Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data provide the most information about crime rates, but they are not sufficiently fine-tuned to provide information on the diverse factors affecting such trends; see CRS Report RL34309, How Crime in the United States Is Measured, by Nathan James and Logan Rishard Council.
Figure 10. Known Migrant Deaths, Southwest Border, 1985-2012
Source: University of Houston Center for Immigration Research (CIR); Jimenez, “Humanitarian Crisis,” 2009 (ACLU); CBP Office of Congressional Affairs March 13, 2013 (DHS).
With respect to mortality, available data about migrant deaths along the Southwest border are presented in Figure 10. The figures come from academic research based on local medical investigators’ and examiners’ offices in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas between 1985 and 1998 (the University of Houston’s Center for Immigration Research, CIR); Mexican foreign ministry and Mexican media counts compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego; and data compiled by DHS based on bodies recovered on the U.S. side of the border.150 All three data sources reflect known migrant deaths, and therefore undercount actual migrant deaths since some bodies may not be discovered.151 Additionally, U.S. data sources generally do not include information from the Mexican side of the border and therefore further undercount migration-related fatalities.
As Figure 10 illustrates, data from the CIR indicate that known migrant deaths fell from a high of 344 in 1988 to a low of 171 in 1994 before climbing back to 286 in 1998. According to DHS data, known migrant deaths climbed from 250 in 1999 to 492 in 2005, and averaged 431 deaths per year in 2005-2009. DHS’s count fell to an average of 369 per year in 2010-2011, but increased to 463 in FY2012. And the ACLU found that known migrant deaths increased from just 80 per year in 1993-1996 to 496 per year in 1997-2007. The apparent increase in migrant deaths is
noteworthy in light of the apparent decline in unauthorized entries during the same period. These
150 See Stanley Bailey, Karl Eschbach, and Jacqueline Hagan et al., “Migrant Death on the US-Mexco Border 1985-1996,” University of Houston Center for Immigration Research Working Paper Series, vol. 96, no. 1 (1996); Jimenez,
“Humanitarian Crisis,” 2009.
151 The Border Patrol has drawn criticism from human rights activists who claim that the agency’s migrant death count understates the number of fatalities. Some contend that the Border Patrol undercounts fatalities by excluding skeletal remains, victims in car accidents, and corpses discovered by other agencies or local law enforcement officers; see , for example, Raymond Michalowski, “Border Militarization and Migrant Suffering: A Case of Transnational Social Injury,” Social Justice, Summer 2007.
data offer evidence that border crossings have become more hazardous since the “prevention through deterrence” policy went into effect in the 1990s,152 though (as with crime) the precise impact of enforcement on migrant deaths is unknown.